


you're the one who sees the darkness on the edge of town

by lanyon



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shoots Clint Barton in the thigh in an alleyway in Alphabet City, too close to District X for comfort. He uses his tie as a tourniquet and helps Barton to his feet and wonders if Barton always talks this much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're the one who sees the darkness on the edge of town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/gifts).



> \+ Sequel to [asking about a scar (and i know i gave it to you months ago)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/384727).  
> +Title from Richard Hawley's _Don't Get Hung Up In Your Soul_.  
>  +Belated happy birthday to Luc.
> 
> +Podfic, by regonym, is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/398451) (and is wonderful). <3

He is not a man to dwell on memories and he is not a man to live on hope. He is a realistic man; he is a man who lives on caffeine, since he gave up smoking; he is a man who eats at a cafeteria table on his own, frowning at his laptop, and he is a man who seldom makes eye contact and so it is believed that he is a boring man. He is impeccably turned out and his shoes are black and shiny and he only smiles every other day, or so the rumours go.

\----

He is eight years old and everything is Captain America, from his pyjamas to his bedclothes to his red, white, blue and starry birthday party.

Do you want to be Captain America when you grow up? a lady asks. One of his mother’s friends, he thinks; she is old and sort of pretty and he looks at her as though she’s an idiot. He is eight years old and he is nothing so presumptuous. He is not a hero but he has faith that there are heroes. 

He is twelve years old when he learns that Captain America was a real man. It is a moment for deep contemplation, sitting on a church pew and his shiny black shoes are too tight around the toes and Captain America was real and so was Bucky Barnes and greater love has no man than this. It is a moment for deep revelations; there have been heroes and so there will be again.

He puts away his comic books and he puts away such childish things but he keeps the bedclothes and the poster on the back of his door because truth and justice and the American way are not childish. 

\----

Ambition is not the same as hope. His parents are wealthy and he goes to boarding school and he plays polo and gets perfect grades and he grows up and there are no grass stains on his knees or grazes on his palms and there is less laughter. When his parents die, it is as though a light has gone out but, in the end, nothing important has been extinguished; there is a flicker or there will be a blaze and Phil has no intention of catching fire. He is not incendiary but he is the fuse.

He smiles less and less. 

\----

He is recruited young, straight out of Yale. They tell him he tested off the chart but he doesn’t remember taking any tests. They ask if he can suspend his belief. He says he is resigned. 

They ask him about his beliefs. Hesitantly, he tells them about heroes. 

They hire him on the spot. They tell him it is a lonely life.

\----

He has no expectations. He rises through the ranks because he is clever and inventive and intuitive and efficient. No one believes Fury when he says that Phil Coulson has a wicked sense of humour and maybe every other day, there is a tug at the corner of his mouth like he’s thinking of smiling. 

He does smile but if there’s no one around to see it, its significance is debatable. 

\----

The day the Captain America file lands on his desk should be momentous but there are new recruits to set straight and Romanov has gone off the reservation. Phil looks at her file, and all her black marks, but she’s not yet in the red. He trusts in heroes and betrayal is bewildering to a man who has built his life on simple truths and simple justices.

 

With a deep breath, he opens Steve Rogers’ file. 

 

\----

He first encounters Clint Barton through the CCTV footage of a bank in Switzerland. Barton never misses but Phil Coulson always gets his man.

\----

Phil is not particularly sociable. He knows that he is awkward in company and he’s in his forties and he has lived alone for his entire adult life. Yes, he has faith and it turns out that there are heroes and that there are betrayals. At S.H.I.E.L.D. gatherings, he stays by the bar and agents come and talk to him and sometime during the last twenty years, pity turned to respect and Fury toasts him, glass rims ringing with ice and admiration. Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

He is incomparable, they say, and he’ll always give you the time of day and, no, he’s not married and no one’s ever seen him in a Yankees cap and he never stops by the rec room on Super Bowl night, but this is the price to be paid; this is the price of being the best.

Humanity is overrated, and Phil Coulson is not superhuman and he is not deaf to what is said about him. 

He is the fuse.

\----

Tracking Barton is entertaining because logic cannot be applied. It’s like trailing a four year-old, says Sitwell, but Phil doesn’t think Barton’s attention span is as short as all that. Barton does have a propensity towards shiny things and seems to think himself something of a Robin Hood, dispensing justice haphazardly, and he is running in ever-decreasing circles. 

Romanov has done a number on him, Phil thinks. 

\----

He shoots Clint Barton in the thigh in an alleyway in Alphabet City, too close to District X for comfort. He uses his tie as a tourniquet and helps Barton to his feet and wonders if Barton always talks this much. 

Phil is not expecting Barton’s smile to be so sharp and bright; he is not expecting his wit to be so sharp and bright; he is not expecting everything about Barton to be so sharp and bright, like a flare, like an eclipse, like a hissing match held to a fuse.

Phil’s fingertips and his palm are red with Barton’s blood and, in the ambulance, Barton says that he wouldn’t have missed and Phil smiles and says that he didn’t. 

\----

Phil has lived alone for most of his adult life. Barton demands an explanation for the Patriots shirt in Phil’s hall closet, and for the polo mallets, and for the framed poster of Captain fucking America over the desk in the study. 

Phil hesitates while Barton rifles through his record collection. 

He tells him about heroes. He does not miss how Barton’s hand drops to his thigh, his thumb rubbing a tiny circle in the centre.

Phil reaches out his hand. 

\----

He’s learned a bit about faith.


End file.
